#to use a hackneyed metaphor

[itspileofgoodthings]

my classes went SO well today I will cry

[fictionadventurer]

I don't know why this feels like such a revelation, but after watching the latest Moffat episode of Doctor Who, it clicked for me that the core difference between RTD and Moffat Who is that to RTD, the Doctor is God (or a metaphorical substitute for God), while Moffat's Doctor is a man in need of God.

Like, it's obvious RTD deifies the Doctor. The imagery is not subtle. And Moffat's Doctor is obviously a much more fallible man. But I hadn't fully considered how this affects the kinds of stories they tell.

In RTD's Who, the Doctor is someone who comes into a mundane human existence and gives it meaning. An encounter with the Doctor changes your life forever. You would follow him to the end of the universe if he asked, because life with him is infinitely better than life without him. Humans who try to reach the Doctor's level are struck down, because mere mortals cannot rise to the level of godhood. From a Christian perspective, this offers valid storytelling possibilities ("Human Nature/The Family of Blood", with its musings upon the Incarnation, fits perfectly in this era), but it does have the Doctor standing in the place of God, which suggests that the universe of RTD's worldview doesn't have one and needs the Doctor to fill that gap.

In Moffat's Who, on the other hand, the Doctor is a wondrous, impossible, legendary being--but still just a man. He can guide you through some of the best or most terrifying moments of your life--but your life has meaning outside of him. His companions learn over and over again the perils of relying on him too completely. Ordinary people can be just as good--or better--than him, because the Doctor is just another man, growing and changing and trying to find his place in the universe.

Moffat's Doctor is extremely aware that he's in a story--and he is not the author. In "The Doctor Dances" he is aware of how death-filled his stories usually are, and is ecstatically grateful when he is permitted a story where everybody lives. In "Blink", he and Sally are both following a script--but neither one of them wrote it; though they have free will, this story came from outside of them. Of course, these are examples of Moffat's meta exploration of storytelling--but the fact remains that his Doctor exists in a world where there is a greater force that runs everything.

And the Doctor resists this. He remains skeptical, arrogant, independent--but he is always searching for something more.

All this crystallized when watching "Boom". There, the Doctor is facing soldiers in a religious war, and he sneers that they didn't notice anything fishy because they "had faith, which keeps you from ever having to think for yourself." Those are the brutal words of every hackneyed internet atheist, and since the soldiers were wrong to have faith in this war, it seems like the story's saying the Doctor's right, and religion's just the "opiate of the masses".

And yet.

The episode ends with the Doctor telling a little girl to hold onto faith, and when the religious character points out that the Doctor was stridently against faith, the Doctor replies, "Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I don't need it."

Isn't that the Christian experience in a nutshell? How many of us are tempted to think that life would be so much easier if we didn't follow God? And yet we can't leave it aside because we need God. We need meaning outside ourselves, and life with God is better than life without him.

But this isn't the Whedon-ish universe where it doesn't matter if it's true so long as believing does something good for you. There is objective truth, and the Doctor is aware of it. He is aware that love is the most powerful force in the universe. (God is love). He is aware that everyone and everything dies, yet knows that something lingers on. (God is stronger than death). The Doctor is in a world where God exists, and even if he (or his writer) doesn't know it, he needs him, is searching for him, and to some extent, believes in him, because he can't deny these truths that he's seen. And I cannot get over how many different ways Moffat has been exploring these themes all these years.

[jackhkeynes]

rediveu "second-hand"

rediveu /ˌre.diˈvaw/ [ˌʀe.dɪˈvaw]

second-hand, used, (of goods) previously owned by someone else;

clichéd, hackneyed, unoriginal, repeated often enough to become tiresome;

trite, cheesy, tropey, (of writing) unreflectively and unskillfully reproducing common narrative elements

Etymology: borrowing from Latin redivīvus "resurrected, second-hand" modelled on vīvus > Middle Borlish veu "living" (now obsolete). Metaphorical extension is seen from the late eighteenth century.

Jo stim y lasc rediveu cos outr. /ʒo stɪm i lax ˌre.diˈvaw kɔz ˈutr̩/ [ʝo stɪm i lax ˌʀe.dɪˈvaw kʊˈzu.tɐ] 1s deem df film clichéd adv complete I find the film totally unoriginal.

[embracing-the-ineffable]

The Wizard of Uz and Good Omens

Some interesting info about the Wizard / Land of Uz, partway through this sermon (tw if you follow the link, it begins with a very sad story):

It begins like this: "Once upon a time there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job." "Once upon a time" it begins. This tips us off that what follows is a fairy tale. .... Unbeknownst to Job however, his world is about to come crashing down around his ears. His livelihood is destroyed, all his beautiful sons and daughters are killed, and even Job himself is stricken with a horrible skin disease.

This trouble is the device which sets the plot in motion because we are left to wonder how this pious man will react. What will be the human response to all this misery? There are at least three responses to the problem of evil in the Book of Job.

Job's wife just wants to give up on God. She tells her husband “Curse God and die!" Her solution to the problem of pain is No Theology, or A-theology.

Job’s friends come to help but all they can give Job are the hackneyed bromides of traditional theology—the theology of the academy. All they can give him are Calvin's Institutes and Luther's Catechism and Barth's Dogmatics, but the theology of the academy doesn't work when you're standing next to an open grave and what you really need is Valium to kill the grief and morphine to kill the pain. The friends’ response is Book Theology.

The third response to evil is that of Job himself. He refuses to curse God and die. He knows there's a God. He has always believed in God and he's not going to stop now. "Naked came I from my mother's womb” he says “and naked shall I return. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

Job comes up with—what shall I call it?—a Lived Theology perhaps, or a Protest Theology. Job decides to hang onto God for dear life even if it means he will hang, period."

Though he slay me, yet shall I trust him," says the King James version of Job 13:15.

So, Aziraphale has something in common with Job, that unwavering faith in God, even if heaven and the angels are a mess. And Crowley might have something in common with Job's wife Sitis...

But it continues!

Augustine called her (Sitis) adiutrix diaboli, Satan's Secretary, or Assistant to the Diabolical One. Calvin used pretty much the same words when he called her the organum Satanae, the instrument of Satan.

And I suppose Augustine and Calvin were pretty much on target with their remarks, because after all she was trying to get her husband to do exactly what Satan wanted him to do—curse God and die. In one sense, she really was Satan’s assistant, or Satan’s instrument.

For Sidites, Job's unshakeable reverence for God is equivalent to an irreverence for the sacred lives of her children. She says to herself, "If Job can still love God after what God did to my children, he couldn't possibly have loved my children."

Or, if this is a metaphor for Crowley, he's perhaps thinking, "If Aziraphale can still love God and return to heaven after what they did to me, and tried to do to us, and tried to do to humanity, he couldn't possibly love me or us or humanity they way I thought he might..." ("Tell me you said no.")

Then, it continues! We learn that Satan is God's servant, and known as The Satan, and because Satan doesn't have any independent will of power outside of God's, the bet and Job's punishment came from God. We learn that Bildad is one of Job's friends. There's a quote, "sometimes, we discover our friends when we lose our God."

And there's another friend, Elihu, about whom the author says, "What Elihu gets right is the need for God’s gift of friendship. Not a friend to convince you you are wrong, but a one in a million friend, an angel, or advocate who will intervene on your behalf, to save you from the depths, who brings you back from the brink. Do you know that friend who believes you and will stand by you through anything?" And that part concludes with, "This is the mystery. Multiple things can be true at the same time: God is good. Suffering is real. It might teach us something. It might not. But a good friend, who believes us, who loves us, who shows up no matter what will make all the difference. May we know that friend. May we be that friend."

Further parts go on to explain the seemingly inexplicable ramblings of God from the show about whales and whatnot; She's trying to make a point about the vastness of the universe and how it's beautiful but not FOR people, it's meant to be beautiful and dramatic but not safe.

I like knowing the story that inspired parts of the Job minisode, and thinking about how those parallels might play out in season three. I hope you enjoy it, too!

[libidomechanica]

The ghost of the cattes skyn

The ghost of the cattes skyn be slyk and gave it room to the arrows that brought; and, could not part us with poets sing, that cause as ages upon memory, for his love? Into one assailled between the widow’s wish was often tymes wolde wedde no wyf to go with the same time that every deel. The glasses, the TV flickering arms, and around the common- place book. Its hackneyed speech t’ engarland so, that had been, and uncontrolling sea, in distant … I will resign; forgive me. In swich a tale! Of her five talents other by degree, by sleighte, or pees, or go and leave off metaphor. Float on your hollow groan ran thro’ the outer gate; the wretched her melancholy; the heart do hit, that the worst: all women living thing that liuing thus in perfumes composed with circumstances of Heaven’s imperial face, in which he seyde that was to mariage.

[k00320853]

Graphic Design Project 17/03/25

Today was the first real day working on the project. Armed with artists researched over the weekend, as well as a greater understanding of the word Anthropocene, I started off with a mindmap, in order to find and hone in on certain words which might prove the basis of a design.

The words I came up with

My favourite one out of these six is the "deforestation" panel. Instead of doing the stereotypical image of a vast wasteland of chopped trunks, I took a recognisable image and forced people to reconsider what it represents: namely, the patchwork green fields which sprawl across the countryside like a blanket. The tourist board gets great copy out of these landscapes, often using words like idyllic, picturesque, unscathed. That last one is anything but. Ireland is an extremely deforested country.

A design I think has potential to go places is the "overconsumption" (top left). Instead of drawing out my own designs, a collage of various stickers and advertisements promoting deals and great bargains would be more effective, as people would recognise these from everyday life, causing them to reflect on the real cost of low prices.

This next batch of half a dozen is more outandish and stylised, more metaphorical. The thumnbail of the suit puffing away, the smoke clouding his vision, is a little hackneyed, and perhaps might be more appropriate for an anti-smkoing campaign than a poster on anthropocene; but I like the idea of taking something recognisable, something domestic, something innocent, and turning it on it's head. My favourite part of that one is actually the background: my version of the tacky wallpaper in old homes that seems to have absorbed a forest's worth of CO2.

The other sketch that follows this concept is the upper middle, the one with the earth as a cake being served amongst guests at a party. This has an interesting origin: I appropriated (stole) this idea from the Godfather Part II, one of my favourite movies. In one scene, Michael Corleone is in Havana, conducting a meeting with other mobsters, including his enemy, Hyman Roth. It's Roth's birthday, so a cake, decorated with the map of Cuba, is being served. As they discuss dividing up their assets in the country, whether so-and-so gets a piece of this casino, etc., the dialogue is cleverly edited alongside the cutting and serving of the cake. Essentially, the cake is a symbol of the mob and the bigshots carving up the country's wealth amongst themselves. It's a genius piece of directing from Francis Ford Coppola, and was something that had been rattling around in my head long before this project. Nevertheless, I think it would make a very interesting poster, but at the moment, is a bit too cluttered. If it could be simplified, with that central idea remaining intact, I think I might have my final design.

[nelson-riddle-me-this]

Having a lot of thoughts about this:

Something about this song is so hackneyed but in a way I'm sure people found very compelling. Like it's a love song by rote but in the way people lose their mind about [insert contemporary pop star] whose songs are badly written just because it speaks to a shallow romance and they have applied that song to their own feelings and the person/people they like.

Also my very informed serious professional musician insight is um sawng 2 fast. You can feel that it wants to be taken slower. Like it can't make up its mind if it wants to be a dance or a sincere love song. And the lyrics are just a bit overblown. Like I know it's a song, we exaggerate and use symbols and metaphor and stuff. The lyrics go far much like an action movie that doesn't know how to actually create tension so they just ratchet everything up to the extreme which they wouldn't have to do if the parts had substance. In particular, the lyric "I only know for as long as I may live / I'll only live for the kiss that you alone may give me". Now you can write this in a song, it's possible to feel that way about another person - but mean it. This performance is very surface level.

If you're gonna sing a lyric like that - basically pledging your life to someone - it should sound like you mean it. You can go big, though that's not really in Connie Stevens' wheelhouse. You can go small too - go intimate. But this doesn't commit to an approach that communicates more than a vaguely starry-eyed quality.

The arrangement's pretty, and melodically the song's pretty too. That cascading line really feels like blossoms gently falling out of a tree. Also interesting that the lyrics rhyme "applause" with "because". Most people I know now pronounce it 'beh-cuz'. Anyway thank you for indulging my ramblings.

[xtruss]

How To Write The Perfect CV? A Job Applicant Walks Into A Bar

— May 30th 2024

Illustration: Paul Blow

Imagine meeting a stranger at a party. What makes for a successful encounter? Lesson one is to heed the wisdom of a shampoo commercial from the 1980s: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Lesson two is to remember that you do not need to wear a beret or a fur stole in order to stand out. Lesson three is not to forget that what you leave out matters as much as what you say.

These same principles, it turns out, apply to writing a cv. A résumé is not a list of every job you ever had. It is not your autobiography. It is, like that hair-care advert, a marketing tool. Your audience is made up of recruiters and hiring managers. Like cocktail-party guests, they do not take a long time to decide if they want to keep talking. According to one study, such professionals spend an average of 7.4 seconds skimming a job application. Your guest Bartleby has a few tips on how best to ensure that these seconds count.

The cv’s number-one task is not to put the reader off. If you are thinking of adding a watermark with your initials, think again; you are trying too hard. Use a clean, simple format and avoid fancy fonts (Arial or Helvetica are fine; Century Gothic is not).

Adding colour does not mean using a teal background. Nor does it mean using purple prose. Clichés can be a reason you are passed over for an interview. So can typos; spell-check and proofread over and over. You would be surprised how often someone forgets to include their name and contact details. Dispense with hackneyed descriptors (“cultivated and passionate professional”, “a keen eye for detail”)—facts should speak for themselves. But not all facts. You may think including your ranking on “Overwatch” is a quirky way to illustrate how quick you are on your feet. A recruiter may conclude that it shows you spend hours on the sofa tethered to a gaming console.

Do not hammer your cv out in an hour—take your time to polish it. Condense, filter and distil until what you are left with captures the essence of you. Anyone’s cv can fit on a page, even if you have held residencies in the world’s eight top hospitals or are Christine Lagarde. Forget the personal statement—no one has time for that. If you spent three weeks in the summer when you were 17 keeping the books in your uncle’s hardware store, no one needs to know that if you are now over the age of 25. The older you get, the more you should prioritise work experience over education.

Tailor your résumé for every application by making the relevant tweaks and highlighting different areas. Otherwise you are like the bore who tells the same story to every person he meets. Not everyone—and not every recruiter—is interested in the same things. If you can quantify an accomplishment, do. A second-year law student who just completed his summer internship having worked on six m&a deals? Put that in.

Reasonable gaps in a résumé are not cause for concern. Life happens and sometimes people take time off; you do not have to explain that you spent three months between jobs hiking around Machu Picchu to clear your head and recharge your batteries. A ten-year gap from the workforce may be another matter. So might constant job-switching, which is as much of a red flag to recruiters as admitting to never having had a long-term relationship might be to a stranger at a party. But if this describes your work history then you probably have bigger problems that a cv alone, no matter how masterful, will not fix.

Once you have sent your application, refrain from emailing prospective employers to see if they received it. You risk coming across as that annoying person who texts to see if their previous texts have got through.

In his commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, David Foster Wallace, an American novelist, used the metaphor of fish oblivious to the element surrounding them in order to point to the dangers of the “natural, hard-wired, default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centred”. Your life, he implied, should illustrate an acute awareness of the outside world. So should your cv. Drafting a presentation of your skills and achievements will inevitably reflect the sovereignty and self-absorption of your “skull-sized kingdom”, as Wallace described it. So as you launch yourself into the job market, follow his counsel to young graduates to try always to be aware of their place in the greater scheme of things: “This is water…this is water.” ■

[hiwasseeriver]

i think Taylor Swift is a poet in all the ways that modern poetry sucks. hackneyed and overused metaphors, thoughtless use of language, avoidance of any abstraction and detail for fear of alienating your audience, and an insistence on telling the reader/listener exactly what it is you mean at every point with bland declarative statements. and above all substituting pithy irony for true vulnerability because thats whats gonna go viral. ok done yappin about it

[writ8]

The Economist reads | How to write

What to read to become a better writer

Five texts that explain how to write simply and well

A group of young women working on a script in Greenwich Village, New York City, June 1954.

image: getty images

Sep 9th 2022

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This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit the full collection for book lists, guest essays and more seasonal distractions.

Editor’s update: The Economist has published a revised version of its style guide.

The first words are the hardest. For many of us writing is a slog. Words drip with difficulty onto the page—and frequently they seem to be the wrong ones, in the wrong order. Yet few pause to ask why writing is hard, why what we write may be bad, or even what is meant by “bad”. Fortunately for anyone seeking to become a better writer, the works recommended here provide enlightenment and reassurance. Yes, writing is hard. But if you can first grasp the origins and qualities of bad writing, you may learn to diagnose and cure problems in your own prose (keeping things simple helps a lot). Similarly heartening is the observation that most first drafts are second-rate, so becoming a skilled rewriter is the thing. These five works are excellent sources of insight and inspiration.

Politics and the English Language. By George Orwell. Available on the Orwell Foundation’s website

Starting with Orwell’s essay may seem as clichéd as the hackneyed phrases he derides in it. Published in 1946, this polemic against poor and perfidious writing will be familiar to many. But its advice on how to write is as apposite now as then. (Besides, it is short and free.) Orwell analyses the unoriginal, “dying” metaphors that still haunt the prose of academics, politicians, professionals and hacks. He lambasts the “meaningless words” and “pretentious diction” of his day; many of the horrors he cites remain common. To save writers from regurgitating these, Orwell proposes six now-canonical rules. The first five boil down to: prefer short, everyday words and the active voice, cut unneeded words and strive for fresh imagery. The sixth—“break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous”—displays the difficulty of pinning down something as protean as language. But this has not stopped others trying.

Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. By Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup. Pearson Education; 246 pages; $66.65 and £43.99

In “Style”, Joseph Williams, who taught English at the University of Chicago, instructs writers on how to revise their scribblings into something clearer, more concise and coherent. (Aptly for a text about rewriting, it is the latest in a long line of reworkings of Williams’s teachings on the subject, which appeared under various titles.) Unlike Orwell, who devised high-level rules for writers to wield by instinct, Williams proposes nuanced “principles” and shows how to apply them. Whereas, for instance, Orwell exhorted writers to “never use the passive where you can use the active”, Williams explains how passives can sometimes help create a sense of flow. This forms part of his coverage of “cohesion” and “coherence”, which could upend the way you write. Insightful, too, is Williams’s guidance on pruning prose and on the ills and virtues of nominalisations—nouns formed from verbs (as “nominalisation” is from “nominalise”), which often send sentences awry. Such technical details, summary sections and practice exercises make “Style” the most textbook-like work on this list. It may also be the most useful.

Explore more Summer reads:

Where are the world’s best non-native English speakers? This index held some surprises.

Rapid progress in ai is generating fear and excitement. Two experts argue the world needs an international agency to govern it, in a guest essay for By Invitation.

We went to the school where Russia’s state-television journalists are trained. They are being taught to fight a holy war.

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. By William Zinsser. HarperCollins; 321 pages; $17.99 and £13.99

Less overtly practical than “Style” but far more fun to read is “On Writing Well”. William Zinsser, who was an American journalist and teacher, is a witty commentator on the writer’s craft with a talent for aphorisms (eg, “the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components”). He embraces slippery subjects like “rhythm” and “voice” that tend to defy rules or principles. But he purveys practical wisdom, too, diagnosing stylistic blunders, exploring genres from memoir to business writing, and analysing passages from well-known works and his own journalism. Zinsser is always encouraging. Introducing a marked-up extract from drafts of “On Writing Well”, a spider’s web of self-edits, he counsels: “Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair.” Zinsser also gives fellow writers much to emulate. His paragraph-ending sentences are a marvel.

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. By Steven Pinker. Penguin; 368 pages; and $18 and £10.99

An expert on words and brains, Steven Pinker wants to help writers write better by getting them into the minds of their readers. The celebrated psycholinguist argues that “the curse of knowledge” is the biggest cause of bad writing: like children, writers forget that others often do not know what they know. Bad writers tend to dwell on irrelevant points and make logical connections that are logical only to them. Their prose—the type beloved of academics, bureaucrats and businessfolk—abounds in abstract nouns and luxuriates in long sentences. By contrast, good writing (“classic style”, in Mr Pinker’s phrase) assembles concrete words into straightforward sentences that readers find simple to grasp. Why should this be so? Using striking and funny examples, Mr Pinker shows how working memory, which stores syntactic constructions until they are complete, is easily swamped. In closing, he joins the battle over English usage, as our full review of “The Sense of Style” describes.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Merriam-Webster; 989 pages; $29.95

Every writer needs a reference book to look up troublesome issues of grammar and usage; no one has memorised them all. The quality of such books has improved in recent years, but one from the 1990s has earned its keep since then. Merriam-Webster (mwdeu) is America’s best-known dictionary publisher. This guide contains not exactly definitions, though, but mini-essays: on individual words (can “data” be singular?), confusingly similar ones (such as “comprise” and “compose”) and grammatical conundrums (such as the split infinitive, dangling modifiers and so on).

What distinguishes mwdeu is its relentless empiricism. Where a debatable claim about correct usage is made, it surveys the history of other guides and their recommendations, as well as going to Merriam-Webster’s huge bank of citations from literature, non-fiction and journalism. In many cases, a proposed rule (such as the ban on split infinitives) is shown to be baseless. But in other cases, the guide is conservative. On the “comma fault” (joining two independent clauses with nothing more than a comma), mwdeu finds it in some great authors’ literary work, but warns readers that “you probably should not try the device unless you are very sure of what you want it to accomplish.” Good sense all round.■

_______________

The Economist offers its own advice on writing in “Writing With Style”, our revised in-house style guide, published in 2023; in the Johnson column on language; and in Economist Education’s course on business writing.

Free tools can help. To discover whether your writing is “lean” or in “heart attack” territory, try The Writer’s Diet. This website tests how bloated passages are by adjectives, prepositions and so on. Or paste your prose into the oed Text Visualiser, from Oxford University Press, to uncover the origins of your words. Many of English’s most concrete and vivid words derive from Anglo-Saxon. These tend also to be short and punchy—echoing Winston Churchill, The Economist once argued (entirely in monosyllables) that “short words are best”.

This article appeared in the The Economist reads section of the print edition under the headline "What to read to become a better writer"

The future of war: A special report

[kingofdersecest-2]

Throwing in my two cents as well to this.

One of the major problems is that changing the sexuality or gender identity of a decade+ established legacy character is mega cringe and stupid and 10/10 times does not work.

John Egbert is cis, has been cis for as long as he's been a character concept and would be cis had Homestuck reached its natural life cycle by concluding with Act 7.

However, with the opening of The Epilogues and Homestuck2 as a whole, we open this can of worms of changing the nature of an already established three dimensional character, who has already gone through his character development and character arcs in the previous work.

So with the proposal of June Egbert as a concept, we open the jar of worms into John deciding to become trans at some point in his "adulthood" him being a 30 something god who is immortal and whose physical age is questionable because HS2 continues to use the spritework of the characters when they were 13 so its really fucking difficult to determine how old these motherfuckers are supposed to be even though they have families so you get the incredibly creepy depiction of 13 year old sprite john standing next to his wife and child.

Anyways, I say him deciding to become trans because this was not a natural course for John to discover this about himself. I know The Trans Journey is a whole thing about self discovery, and that every Trans Person is born Trans and the trick of it is discovering it for yourself, usually through feelings of dysphoria.

This is all if you are a real person. John is not a real person. John is a fictional character who is written by real people. Real people decided that John, a previously cis character would become trans.

Now becoming trans is an interesting fictional character arc but it comes far too late for John, for you see, he already had a journey of self discovery, it was called Homestuck, perhaps you've heard of it?

In Homestuck, one of the main themes is "Growing up is hard and nobody understands" and the characters all revolve around that theme in some way, they grow up, come into themselves, discover their sexualities, such as Dave and Rose discovering they are bisexual. Such discoveries would also reveal gender identities, and indeed Homestuck had a vehicle that would have made the trans metaphor perfect.

Dream Selves/God Tier. In case you dont remember, Dream Selves reflect how the person sees themselves. Those that needed glasses still gave their dreamselves poor vision and requiring glasses, Terezi's dreamself was still blind and used her smell-sense to get around, and most interestingly, Dave's dreamself had the sunglasses he got from John as a gift, the Ben Stiller shades, rather then the anime shades he had worn beforehand, or no shades at all, although Dave had a whole thing about hiding his eyes, so thats part of his identity too.

Now, the meta reason the dreamselves were like this was just so Hussie could re-use the same sprites with a clothing swap, but the in-universe explanation is really fascinating, and if any of the characters were Trans, you'd see June where John's dreamself was, and upon ascending to Godtier, would become her.

But alas, this did not happen as John was not trans at the time. And I bet the HS2 writers are just seething that the perfect trans metaphor slipped through their fingers 14 years ago.

So the Homestuck2 have to desperately cobble together a hackneyed plot to which John discovers him being June, probably through Ultimate Ascension, since becoming your Ultimate Self merges all versions of yourself into you. How and why this would turn John trans and not Dirk, who the fuck knows, or cares? They may not even do it through the Ultimate Self and may just come up with some other magical bullshit way for him to transition. Any way they do it, it'll be fucked up.

Why? Because their representation has always been fucked up!

Homestuck 2 has its trans representation in Miss Jade Harley, Dog-Dick Bull extraordinaire. Jade fused with Bec, her male dog, which gave her a dog dick. She wanted a baby so bad, so she convinced Rose, who is in a lesbian relationship with Kanaya, to have a secret baby with her, and name it after a Furry Porn Joke, thus Yiffany was born.

A character so fucking terrible it horseshoes itself into being the best character Homestuck has ever made.

Goddamn, I fucking love Yiffany so fucking much.

If you had told me this. If you had told me that a Dog-Futa had cucked a lesbian couple to make a secret baby named after a hentai joke, and then asked me who wrote it. You know what I would say? I would have said the most queerphobic motherfucker on the planet.

Someone who actively hates lesbians, trans people, and just the entire LGBT community as a whole. I might even call that person a nazi.

But no! Alas I would guess wrong. Because it was not a queerphobic bigot, it was…..a queer person. Multiple queer people in fact had their hands in this….disaster of an idea.

Bonafide pronouns in bio motherfuckers. People that would gladly tell you their gender identity, sexual preferences and mental illnesses at the drop of a fucking hat. Genuine Carrrd carrying bitches.

About as Terminally Online Queer, as you could possibly get.

Now of course ole Hussie gets the blame for this, I heard tell that HS2 had some demands that the futa-cuck-yiffany plan had to happen. No idea if this is true, and again, Hussie is blamed for June to be totally planned from the start, and the stupid as shit Toblerone Wish only was a happy coincidence and it was going to happen anyway.

Obviously this is a complete and total fucking lie. But lets go with it. Lets for a second, pretend that it is true.

My question is, why? Why go along with Hussies terrible idea? I can only thing that somehow, the new team writing for HS2, is contractually bound to write June in somewhere. I have no fucking idea how much power Hussie has over Homestuck anymore, but I suppose he still has the power over contracts? Who the fuck knows.

So the question is, do you trust that the comic, that gave us a futa-lesbian cuck-sex joke child will give us a positive trans journey for John?

Fuck no.

can i ask why june is bad or is the whole thing with june behind something problematic?

I just think it doesn't fit with the story. And it doesn't really add more to John as a character. So he's trans, so what? That doesn't stop from the fact he was depressed and most of his friends are assholes. Not like him being trans is gonna make things better. And if people bring up his depression was from the gender identity, it wasn't the case when we had spent years reading his journey from his 13th birthday of wanting to play a game with his friends and crazy shit happened. I also like John as he is and just want him to be happy. I want all the characters to be happy. Sadly, Homestuck is not about happiness. Not in the base webcomic, the spin-offs, sequels, or even Homestuck Beyond Canon. It's all about the nihilism approach that no matter what a character does to improve, the story can only move forward if they are the absolute worst.

[dekusleftsock]

MHA - How to break a trope

Why tropes are a good and bad thing

Something I was personally taught in the artist world is the phrase “you need to learn the rules before you break them”, and that should honestly be applied to any form of art. Writing, photography, drawing, animation, music, and even singing. Art is an abstract concept yes, but we as human beings are able to separate and break down things into patterns that we can understand and become better at doing. It’s not linear, but it’s also not completely abstract.

What is a trope?

Well, as Wikipedia puts it, “A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. Keith and Lundburg describe a trope as, ‘a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase.”

However, in urban dictionary it defines it as, “An overused, nearly meaningless word worn out by pretentious twits, much like paradigm. See hackneyed and vacuous.”

Even though a trope is by definition is just an artistic affect, we generally perceive it as something overused within language. Usually, in literary language when we talk about common metaphors like, “she was as delicate as a daisy”, we call it a trope because of how common the phrase actually is. It can also be used for character tropes, like “the first girl” which just means that whatever love interest that was introduced in a love triangle first is going to be the end game. Or even the “manic pixy dream girl” trope which is commonly used in anime where a girl is super upbeat and the boy is not and she is actively trying to make him happier. It’s not necessarily that these are actually bad, rather just common. These are tropes and not rules though, which is why instead of learning how to break a trope, we have to learn what they are and why they’re so common.

Are tropes a good or bad thing?

Well, that kind of depends on the context.

Tropes are fun and a lot of times easier to write. They’re great for letting young writers make stories and have a lot of wiggle room with how you choose to use them.

But, as stated by the urban dictionary definition, they can be pretty boring to watch over and over again. Sometimes it’s hard to find good media that uses its tropes in a new or interesting way.

Something that we have to think about is that, even though tropes are common, they are tropes for a reason. Popular things are popular USUALLY because they’re good. There’s a reason why so many writers use them, and that’s because they can all be used in different and unique ways, but at what point does a trope start being an archetype?

Archetypes vs tropes

Lets get this out of the way; every character you have ever scene fits into an archetype. Hawaii.edu says that it’s, “Generally, the original model from which something is developed or made; in literary criticism, those images, figures, character types, settings, and story patterns that, according to the Swiss analytical psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, are universally shared by people across cultures.”

There are 12 main archetypes, The Innocent, Everyman, Hero, Outlaw, Explorer, Creator, Ruler, Magician, Lover, Caregiver, Jester, and Sage. I could individually give a definition for each of these, but thankfully, because you are able to read this you also have access to Google. I recommend (especially if you wanna understand writing better and/or wanna be better at writing) to look into these individually and what they mean. It’s very insightful.

Besides that, a trope becomes an archetype when you take away the specifics. A love interest like “the first girl” could be any of these archetypes. A trope will always have an archetype but an archetype will not always have a trope.

How to make a trope interesting

My advice here is to mix and match. Try to not follow a formula, and combining tropes with other tropes, or even twisting something on its head (like turning the first girl trope into the two love interests get together and/or making it non monogamous in some way) will make your tropes more interesting than others.

But also? Knowing when and when not to break a trope is just as important.

Take MHA, DOES ochako fit “the first girl” trope with toga? Because I don’t think she does. If that were the case Horikoshi wouldn’t have made toga be in love with ochako too.

Katsuki definitely fits quite a few tropes. Childhood friends, tsundere, and maybe even the first girl trope.

My point here is that tropes are a way to talk to the audience and relay information. Whether that be through communicating that this will be the next thing happening (like bkdk being canon in some way) or tricking you into thinking it will be something else. (Like 342 being about how ochako wants to save toga rather than a genuine izu//ocha moment)

We have to think critically about how a story chooses to present itself, because a good writer will know EXACTLY WHY they made each and every decision in their story. There is importance and meaning in so much more of storytelling than we initially think.

[onewomancitadel]

Weirdest thing is when people say I read into stuff. What, like it's hard? Topically to R/WBY, it's very straightforward textually and thematically. It's not complicated. I think you actually have to be pretty illiterate and/or wilfully ignorant to not get its basic ideas, which really says something.

If I used this blog to post more about something like Dune, which I think is a little more opaque, that would actually be a different case of textual argumentation, I think. Then again last night I was reading about fucking phallic imagery of all things in a hackneyed kidult show and I was like, hm, I think you people need to have your sexual metaphors taken away from you because you've abused your privileges...

But I think this is (as it's come up so many times) a case of basic projection. I don't need to make much of a complicated case for Cinder's redemption (or Knightfall) because Ozlem lol. *points* I can just cite uh, actual fucking dialogue and narrative events. It only seems hard because this fandom is full of morons.

[maroonghoul]

Horror Movie’s I just watched: April 2023

A bit late, but to make up for it, there’s a lot more than usual! Here we go:

Beyond the Black Rainbow Definitely the same director who would go on to give us Mandy, tone-wise. The old complaints for a movie like this would be that the plot is either too thin or abstract. But, for my mindset regarding horror films these days if nothing else, it’s become what I prefer. I’ve made myself so busy with errands and other things (including posting here), that a plot I only need half a mind to follow is a boon as long as it’s got an atmosphere I like. Granted, there was still a few plot things I missed that hampered my enjoyment a bit. But still, it was all enough that I hope to see more of Panos Cosmatoes’s work.

Hatching Here’s fun idea to watch on Easter.  It’s even kinda sorta has a resurrection at the end. But yeah, the metaphor is pretty clear as day. The monster symbolizing the girl’s hatred for her mother and all those pressuring her...plus puberty, I think. A bit of a shame the mother doesn’t suffer any real direct consequences at the end. But she does have to live with the fact she symbolically and literally killed her daughter. 

I know what the ending represents; the girl never being able or willing to be the perfect daughter again. But, in-universe, now I almost want a sequel, at least in spirit. This idea that a the Thing like monster has replaced one of your loved ones and it civilized itself enough that it might not kill again. Do you just live with it to keep up appearances? How? But, given that The Thing is my favorite horror movie, any excuse to explore the themes of that further are forever entrenched in my mind. 

Death Kappa Does a parody succeed if it makes you realize how much you miss the real thing? This movie starts out making fun of films like Pumpkinhead and ends making fun of 70s era Tokusatsu. Though in a way of just cranking them up pass 11. And now I just miss watching old giant monster movies. It helps that Kappa is strangely cute, even after murdering people.

Bonus points for portraying Japanese Imperialists in way just as dignified as Mel Brooks and Taika Watiti portray Nazis. Meaning, as the dumbest bunch of bullying nerds the world has ever seen. And given what comes later in his career, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Hideaki Anno here.

In The Earth And now this year’s Earth Day feature; the Better Watch Out of Folk Horror movies. Even without the masks and tests, you can tell this was filmed during the lockdown. Given the threat level the film tries to sell him as, I would’ve expected Zach to be more of the stereotypical hard core survivalist type. Yeah, that would’ve made his evilness less shocking as a reveal. But I still had trouble buying it. 

Bit of shame people with epilepsy can’t enjoy this movie. Though I don’t know how you can portray the spirit Parnag Fegg messing with people’s heads without it looking ridiculous. Also, given what happened to Martin’s foot, I’m a bit let down there wasn’t more bodily injuries on him and Alma’s side. I’m not saying, I wanted either of them to be dead at the end, just a little more messed up. Again, I’m sick that way.

Evil Dead Rise *Spoilers*I might come off as too negative here. 

I liked this the least out of all the Evil Dead movies, but the reasons might be entirely subjective. I’ve heard a lot online how the scariest parts about this movie, fears connected to Mothers or being a Mother, spoke to some people. I don’t want to take that away from anyone. In a lot of ways, it’s super ballsy, including kids in the body count and deadite count. It’s less hackneyed to find another version of the Necronomicon from the past found and put together then...going to that cabin again. There’s some creativity with the gore. Given how indestructible these deadites are hyped to be, a wood chipper’s a reliable way to get rid of them as anything. I don’t even mind the loose ends like the remaining deadites left behind, because the earlier films built off of loose ends from each other. And I still wants sequels from this. 

But it feels like it comes at the cost of taking risks in areas I care about more, like tone. This and the last movie feel like they more directly inspired by the first movie, which is common for these requels. But here’s the thing; I understand why they did that with Halloween and Candyman and such. Because not only are the originals still regarded the best, it’s not even close. But Evil Dead never had that problem. Sure, 2 is considered the best, but all the other ones from the original trilogy are still seen as strong in it’s own right. Even the least scary of the bunch, Army of Darkness is an awesome movie. I get why the Alvarez remake focused on the original and nothing else. But I’m scared that the tone and fun from 2, 3, and the TV series are going to get abandoned because every attempt to continue a franchise has to be as serious as possible. Maybe that’s more of a concern about trends.

Sure, I get why that wouldn’t have worked at all with, like I said, kids getting killed and mutilated. (Unless you’re just as sick as Sam Raimi, who in the old day would make the youngest one get possessed too while he’s at it.). Balancing comedy and horror, especially the way Raimi does it, is a lot harder then what they were going for here. But that was what helped made these movies specials. That made them stand out. Looney Tunes with buckets of blood. 

Would I have want Lee Cronin to make a completely different movie? If this was where his passion lied, absolutely not. But maybe, I would like some comedic chops to contribute to this franchise again in the future. I’m sorry that I’m coming down on this. I guess I feel that part of the fun was when it feels like there’s a deadite behind the camera too.

Last thing, I would’ve figured Beth would’ve got the exact opposite takeaway from this. “If they’re going to potentially wander off and find a book that summons demons, Hell no I don’t want kids!”

Renfield Certainly a better foundation for a Dark Universe more than “Tom Cruise and a Mummy too I guess”. Well this and The Invisible Man reboot. It’s a rare treat seeing Nic Cage play the villain, but Dracula’s often a good one to make an exception, especially in a production that encourages his usual style. It’s also kinda funny with more people realizing the OG novel Renfield wasn’t as much Dracula’s slave as the adaptations would have us believe, having a film version where he fully betrays him and lives is refreshing. Making it an allegory for abusive relationships is the icing on the cake. Or maybe it’s the other way around. 

The mob sub plot I’m not as crazy for, outside of Ben Schwartz playing the most pathetic mobster’s son since Fredo. Loser side villains are fun when not overused. I can buy a mob family, when they realize that Dracula’s real and here, they’d form an evil alliance with him. I could’ve had more of that.

And of course, like any proper vampire films made post Hays Code, there’s a lot of blood. Granted, with one scene where it was clearly CGI, but better that then cutting away. 

I’m not too sure how you make a sequel to this, or even if you should. But more of the classic Monsters used in modern day metaphors in modern day dark comedies, please!

[professorspork]

1, 6 :)

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Well I was going to do this in a reply to @longroadstonowhere and @twilight-blaze on my first post but if you're going to straight-up ask me I suppose I should just go ahead and reveal it here.

the musical i am writing a RWBY AU of

is 

>.>

<.<

... Newsies (1992) dir. Kenny Ortega!

it has a title, but I will be tagging it with its beloved working codename: newsbees au

Uh, to clarify from that earlier ask in case what I said was misleading, it's not entirely in Ilia's POV-- just one scene is so far, but there may be more as I go. I am just a smidge over 50k in, some 38k of which is actually written sequentially from the beginning as opposed to floating scenes or outlines of later chapters. progress is a little slow at the moment; I wasn't able to write much of anything the last three weeks due to extenuating circumstances and I've now gotten to the part where, like, the plot part of the plot is kicking in, and I'm having to make decisions about what to keep, what to change, what to borrow from the Newsies musical instead and what to use from the actual Newsboys' Strike of 1899. my optimistic goal is that I'll have it done and posted before RWBY comes back but like, RTX is in a month and if they say the show's returning in September or something there's no way that's happening. we'll see! i'm not planning on posting any of it until the vast, vast majority of it is complete, because it's got a lot of moving parts and I don't want to paint myself into a corner I can't write out of.

as for what I love most about it... well. the answer I want to give is that it's giving me an avenue to talk about like, labor and movement work and community organizing, but to say that's my favorite part would probably be a lie because my favorite part of this is the same bit that's ALWAYS my favorite part, which is I love these characters and love watching them learn to love each other.

so we'll say those are tied

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

there is no way I can give just one answer to this. even if I narrow it down to just RWBY there's no way I can give just one answer to this.

I have the most fun writing Emerald because she has no tact and zero filter, so I can literally say just about anything I can think of and pull it off, and that's so freeing and entertaining

I have the most fun writing Yang because in many ways it's the closest to writing myself-- the way she tries to break the tension in serious moments with a pun is SUCH my go-to. even though I don't have the temper Yang does, she's just a really comfortable "home base" character for me

I have the most fun writing Blake because when she's feeling good she's such a sarcastic troll, and when she's not she can be SO melodramatic and over the top in her self-recriminations. like, she takes herself and everything else so seriously that metaphors that might be hackneyed or cliché in someone else's POV are perfectly acceptable when you can be like "lmao yeah, okay sure Blake"

and I have the most fun writing Ruby because I love Ruby Rose. she is the best person, her brain works in such interesting and unexpected ways, she's so insightful and gives herself so little credit for that.

[niamflopped]

Louis Tomlinson vs Sam Fender

Let's see which songwriter can evoke their teenage years most effectively.

Change by Louis Tomlinson

Starts with a cliche - 'time of our lives' - and decides with pure nostalgia and barely any self reflection that at 17/18 he and his friends were 'complete.' Asserts that 'everything's changed' but gives no detail as to what exactly he means.

More repetition of 'everything's changed outside' and now we worry for the state of Doncaster. Has there been a localised extinction event? Doncaster razed to the ground? Nope, because he tells us that he and his friends still feel like 'kings' (another hackneyed image) when they head out into the same 'silver streets.'

More lack of self knowledge is evident in the line 'I feel the same inside.' Really, Louis? Eleven years away, fatherhood, two major bereavements, £46m richer, plus four world tours, and your inner state is the same as it was at 18? Not learnt anything? You surely have, so why not share it?

And yet more cliches: 'losing our minds', 'a trip down memory lane', 'nothing stays the same.' He's given us only one specific description of what he actually did aged 17. We can't imagine much about his life then or now. And are the Doncaster kids really 'alright'? What are their prospects? Again, his understanding is puddle deep.

'Over analyse?' If only you were, Louis, but you're still dripping in facile cliches like 'you don't get another life.'

Grade: E

Lacks vivid descriptions. Lacks interesting use of imagery and language. Seems shallow and disingenuous, steeped in a worrying lack of self knowledge.

Target: Read more! Read poetry, read plays, read novels! Play with language, use original similes and metaphors. Don't rhyme 'life' with 'life'! It's lazy. This whole song is lazy.

Already in verse 1 we have nine vividly evocative phrases which open a window into Sam's life at 17. Slang words like 'bizzies' create a sense of place. He doesn't pretend he feels the same inside as he did then, nor does he give a vague, idealised version of his teenage years like Louis does. A lot of his memories hurt and 'claw' even now. There's a lovely blend of lyrical and colloquial language in this - 'an embryonic love', 'the sickness was forever', 'still bugs me now.'

So much self examination here of the damaging effects of trying to conform to the stereotypes that rule the north east of England. He fights against becoming 'a mirrored picture of my old man.' Louis as the 'king of Friday night' celebrates this 'cheap drink/lads lads' culture while Sam points out how toxic it is, and how hard it is to shrug off.

Sam ends by sharing that he even considered dealing drugs at seventeen in order to pay off his mother's debts. Poverty had a strangehold on his childhood and nearly took him under, as the final powerful refrain confirms.

Grade: A*

Poetic and philsophical. So much talent here!